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Best Wishes Anime Language

Starting in Pocket Monsters Best Wishes, the anime began using another new made up language to obviously reduce the costs of paint editing the show in the various different languages that it is now distributed in. Originally the series had Japanese text and it was painted out by the English dub. Later, a made up language debuted in the Orange Islands but it did not show signs of it being a distinct interpretable language.

This new language that is used in Best Wishes is actually a simple substitution cipher where one basic modern Latin alphabet letter is replaced with a symbol from the made up language. Thanks to all the people in chat that helped out deciphering the symbols. Serebii suggested I post this here as its very interesting in regards to the anime series.

We are also looking to find all instances of the Language as seen in the anime. If you know of episodes that have the language, please post the episode number, the time index / or quick summary of the approximate area it aired in.

After 12 years of being a Pokemon fan, I'm officially quitting the fandom. This is not a rage quit and it has nothing to do with the Pokemon franchise. It's also NOT a sudden decision - I've planned it for months but I decided to stay a true, active Pokemon fan until the very last day. The reason for my leave is the fact that I'm starting my studies at the Uni and I decided that it's a perfect moment to move on with my life. I'll never forget all these awesome years and Pokemon will always be a part of my childhood memories. Goodbye friends! Thank you.

Pretty sweet but I've never been interested in the language as a kid or an adult so I really couldn't give one, the dubbers wasted their time editing the writing languages like they used to, oh well haha.

Oh yeah, I remember seeing Kenyan's sign up sheet in the first Don Battle episode, and I thought he had bad handwriting. However, there were only 3 characters in the name, and I still think his handwriting's on the shoddy side...

I've deciphered it long before you even tried, work had been done deciphering it since the Don Battle eps. So your 'How the Symbols were Deciphered' is wrong. You only even noticed it after I mentioned it.

Also, you're missing several letters if you haven't noticed. I'll give you one for free, Q looks like two circles, a smaller one inside a larger one, but you can decode the others yourself.
And your description of a 'Second Language' is completely wrong -- I don't know if you refer to the hiragana-seeming form, or the English-seeming form, but neither is used like furigana as you describe.

As for where it is, check just about any ep and you'll see at least one of the three alphabets used. It's not hard to spot.

I've deciphered it long before you even tried, work had been done deciphering it since the Don Battle eps. So your 'How the Symbols were Deciphered' is wrong. You only even noticed it after I mentioned it.

Don't be a smartarse, if you deciphered it long before they tried, how come you didn't post a thread?

Don't be a smartarse, if you deciphered it long before they tried, how come you didn't post a thread?

I didn't post a thread as I didn't think anyone would be interested. It's a very minor point, and even translating it most of it comes out in Japanese or pseudo-Japanese. (One episode has text showing 'FAMIRI- RESUTORAN', for example.)
I have mentioned it ages back though. A post over three months old showing a translation from the katakana-seeming form.
And then there's this, the direct precedent to Sunain writing about it, was a post by me, explaining and translating most of the katakana-seeming form.

It is correct that this is not a recent discovery. myriada, JDS and Sunain have all done individual observations and minor documentation over time, and reported findings.
What is recent, and this post reports, was the effort taken to actually sit down, completely map out the alphabet, go through episodes and decode text, and present it properly on a website rather than on some one-off forum posts to be lost to the depths of time.
And yeah, it's true that myriada's "directly preceding" post on Bulbagarden got some discussion on the subject going, eventually spurring this effort, and some of her findings were used for it. All thanks to her for that.

I didn't post a thread as I didn't think anyone would be interested. It's a very minor point, and even translating it most of it comes out in Japanese or pseudo-Japanese. (One episode has text showing 'FAMIRI- RESUTORAN', for example.)
I have mentioned it ages back though. A post over three months old showing a translation from the katakana-seeming form.
And then there's this, the direct precedent to Sunain writing about it, was a post by me, explaining and translating most of the katakana-seeming form.

Both on Bulbagarden and not on Serebii. You didn't think that anyone here would be interested, and now it looks as if people ARE taking a fancy to the idea of an anime only language that won't have dubbers running to the censors. I only have a problem with you acting as if you should take all the credit, if you wanted some you shoulda spoke up earlier or summink.

To clear things up slightly...
It is correct that this is not a recent discovery. myriada, JDS and Sunain have all done individual observations and minor documentation over time, and reported findings.

Indeed we have. When the first episode BW episode aired in Japan on 2010-09-23 we talked about it and started making notes and references as we noticed a pattern then, so as many people know its something we've discussed for a very long time. As Dephender said, its only just recently that I decided to take the time and make a page and chart dedicated to it (which we'll continue to update and enhance as time permits) as we've had countless other projects we've been working on as well as full time jobs. This thread is to help expand the knowledge and awareness of a decipherable Pokemon language in the Best Wishes anime and get help in identifying more references as they've appeared in the series.

The dev team thought this through, but not well enough. If they did, stuff written in it would actually decode into something understandable, whatever language it was. (rest is too small, Zs (and one X) are where a character not on the above list appeared) It's as if a kid was just banging random keys.

Indeed, it appears that often the letters are just random letters the typesetting animators used. Other than, the Japanese word Kinkyu (緊急) which translates to 'emergency' in English, the rest in that instance just appears to be random gibberish. It seems to be hit and miss when they decide to actually put decipherable text.

From the Orange Islands arc and onward, a made-up, nonsensical set of squiggles was used to indicate "text" in the series. The 4Kids dub always painted it out (for no logical reason, since it... was just made-up symbols you weren't supposed to understand anyway), so if you watched the dub, you wouldn't have seen it until TPCI took over the dubbing in the Battle Frontier arc.

What's actually interesting about that particular screenshot is that it says: "PASSPORT" and "HANS...." probably "HANSOME", which is supposed to be "Handsome", Looker's Japanese name. Hopefully when that episode airs we can get a better screenshot of that one.

I heard from someone that Kasumi's name was posted in the background in one of the BW eps. Is there any truth to this? I am guessing it's a load of BS like how people spread rumors about her in DP after the lure incident.

I heard from someone that Kasumi's name was posted in the background in one of the BW eps. Is there any truth to this? I am guessing it's a load of BS like how people spread rumors about her in DP after the lure incident.

I haven't seen anyone anywhere except you post that rumour and no its unlikely that Kasumi's name is in the background.

What is confirmed though is the three trainers from BW004. Confirmed one of their names as Andre, and we think the other two are URARA (the guy) with Janovy and Shikijika, and MARHY (Mary), the girl with Koromori. Fairly certain those are the names of the trainers and this is once again another interesting development for the language because their names were not revealed in the credits or closed captions in Japanese or English.

Would like to hear what you guys think about the URARA and MARHY names as its a bit hard to read the symbols. Urara is the Japanese name for Ursula from the Japanese version.

The rumor of Kasumi's DP appearance spawned from people reading announcements of her in-character voice-only role as the host of an early DP special without being aware of this special's existence and taking it to mean the character would appear in the actual show.

But seriously guys, that's not the topic here. Back to talking about the anime language.